OTCQB / OTCQX Requirements Checker
Enter a bid price, beneficial-holder count, public float, and reporting status once, and see exactly which published OTCQB or OTCQX standard clears and which one doesn't — plus the fee schedule and the cure-period rules that determine what happens if you slip after listing.
Test your numbers against the published standard
How this is modeled
Every threshold and fee above is read at runtime from the OTCQB Rules V6 and OTCQX Rules for U.S. Companies v11 entries in this site's data file — nothing is hardcoded in the page. OTCQB rows are independent pass/fail tests; OTCQX's bid price and market cap are a combined test — a company must clear both at once, not either. Fee figures marked "approx." are widely-cited but not re-confirmed against the live 2026 fee schedule; confirm before budgeting.
Educational estimate only, not a listing determination, application, or legal opinion. OTC Markets Group makes the actual eligibility call — this tool models the published rules text as of .
OTCQB vs. OTCQX: two different bars
Same operator, OTC Markets Group, two structurally different tiers with different audiences and different failure modes.
OTCQB is the venture-stage tier: it's built for early-revenue and developing companies that are current in their SEC (or Reg A+) reporting but not yet ready for — or interested in — an exchange listing. The bar is deliberately low on price and float (a $0.05 minimum bid, 50 beneficial holders, 10% public float) and the real gatekeeping happens on disclosure: audited financials from a PCAOB-registered firm, a Verified Company Profile, and an annual management certification. A company can be pre-revenue and still qualify for OTCQB if its paper is in order.
OTCQX is the "premium" OTC tier, and it reads that way in the numbers: a combined $0.25 bid price and $10,000,000 market capitalization test (both, not either), audited financials dated within the prior 18 months, a mandatory annual shareholder meeting — a governance requirement OTCQB doesn't impose — and an absolute "ongoing operations, no shells" bar. OTCQB tolerates a company that was formerly a shell if it has since filed the disclosure a reverse merger requires; OTCQX's marketing positions itself as the tier for operating businesses only, and its listing agreement is written accordingly.
Both tiers require the issuer's transfer agent to participate in OTC Markets' Transfer Agent Verified Shares Program — see below — and both use the same Verified Company Profile and annual certification mechanic. The practical decision for most founders isn't "which tier has the lower bar" — it's whether the business is far enough along, in both financial condition and reporting discipline, to sustain OTCQX's higher continuous-eligibility standard without a near-term downgrade risk.
Verified Profile, annual certification, and the 90-day cure period
The three mechanics that keep a listing current after the first approval.
Both tiers gate ongoing eligibility, not just initial admission, through a Verified Company Profile — a management-attested company page on otcmarkets.com that has to be kept current as material facts change (officers, counsel, auditor, share count, material events). It's the disclosure layer OTC Markets uses in place of an exchange's continuous-listing surveillance, and letting it go stale is itself a compliance failure independent of the financial tests.
Layered on top is the annual certification: once a year, an executive officer has to affirmatively re-attest that the company still meets every quantitative and qualitative standard for its tier — bid price, holder count, float, audit currency, non-shell status, the works. This is the mechanism that catches drift; a company doesn't get grandfathered into a tier it initially qualified for and then quietly stopped meeting.
The one piece of real slack in the system is the 90-day cure period for a bid-price shortfall. If the closing bid dips below the tier minimum intra-year, OTC Markets gives the company up to 90 calendar days to trade back above the threshold before initiating a downgrade to OTC Pink. That window is why the checker above treats a marginal bid price as a live risk to manage — a reverse split or an IR push inside 90 days is a normal response, not an emergency filing.
The transfer agent gate: TA Verified Shares Program
The requirement that has nothing to do with your financials and can still block the application.
Both OTCQB and OTCQX require the issuer's transfer agent to be enrolled in OTC Markets' Transfer Agent Verified Shares Program (TAVSP). The program lets the transfer agent report share data — total shares outstanding, restricted vs. unrestricted, float — directly and independently to OTC Markets, rather than relying on the issuer's own self-reported numbers. It is, functionally, the audit trail behind the public float and beneficial holder figures this checker asks for.
The practical failure mode: a company can clear every numeric test above — bid price, holders, float, audit, reporting — and still stall in the application queue because its transfer agent hasn't enrolled in TAVSP. Enrollment status is worth confirming with the transfer agent in the same conversation as the audit engagement, months before the application is filed, not discovered during it.
Worked example
Reading the checker's logic on one set of numbers.
Take a company trading at a $0.08 closing bid, with 62 beneficial holders of record each holding 100+ shares, a 14% freely-tradable public float, financials audited by a PCAOB-registered firm, and current in its Exchange Act reporting — not a shell. Run against OTCQB: the $0.08 bid clears the $0.05 minimum, 62 holders clears the 50-holder floor, 14% float clears the 10% floor, and the audit and reporting tests both pass — a clean "meets the published standards" verdict, with application and annual fees in the roughly $5,000 / $15,000 range (cited, confirm the live schedule).
Run the identical company against OTCQX and the verdict flips: OTCQX's bid test is $0.25, so the same $0.08 fails outright, and it fails regardless of what the market cap turns out to be, because the two tests are combined — a passing market cap doesn't rescue a failing bid price, and vice versa. The company would need the bid to season above $0.25 for 30 consecutive calendar days (or come in through a Form 211 exemption route) before an OTCQX application is worth filing.
Frequently asked
What the checker assumes, and where the published rules leave room to disagree with older summaries.
Is the OTCQB minimum bid price $0.05 or $0.01?
Per the current OTCQB Rules (V6, effective April 2026), it's $0.05, sustained for 30 consecutive calendar days before admission. A lot of older guides and even some directory sites still cite $0.01 — that was an earlier rule, not the live one. This checker reads the $0.05 figure straight from the current rules text; verify against the live OTC Markets rules PDF before relying on either number for a real application.
What happens if my bid price dips below the minimum after I'm listed?
You get a 90-day cure period. If the closing bid falls below the tier's minimum, OTC Markets allows up to 90 calendar days to trade back above the threshold before it initiates a downgrade to OTC Pink. That's a real but finite window — a reverse split is the standard mechanism to cure a bid shortfall if trading alone doesn't fix it in time.
Does OTCQX really require both a minimum bid price and a market cap?
Yes — it's a combined test, not a choice of either. A company needs a $0.25 closing bid and a $10,000,000 market capitalization, each sustained for 30 consecutive calendar days before applying (Form 211 applicants are exempt from the bid-price leg). A strong market cap does not offset a bid price below $0.25, and a high bid price on a thinly capitalized company doesn't offset a market cap below $10M.
Can a former shell company qualify for OTCQB or OTCQX?
OTCQB's standards focus on current status — a company that has completed the disclosure a reverse merger or de-shelling requires can generally clear the "not currently a shell" test even if it was previously a shell. OTCQX's positioning is stricter on ongoing operations; treat "no shells" there as close to an absolute bar and confirm directly with OTC Markets before assuming a former shell clears it.
Are the fees shown here the actual current OTC Markets fee schedule?
They're cited, widely-referenced figures, not a re-confirmed live schedule — the checker labels them "approx." for exactly that reason. OTCQX's application fee is drawn from the rules text itself and is more reliable; annual fees on both tiers move year to year, so confirm the current number directly with OTC Markets before budgeting against it.
What counts as a "beneficial holder" versus a shareholder of record?
Beneficial holders are the people who actually own the shares — including everyone holding through a broker in street name — as opposed to "holders of record," which on a public company is often just Cede & Co. and a handful of registered names. OTCQB's 50-holder test counts beneficial holders of 100+ shares specifically; your transfer agent and broker-dealer network (via a DTC search or similar) is the source for that number, not your stock ledger.